You invested a lot of time and money to put your company online. Having a professional website that creates a strong impression, provides easy navigation, and answers basic questions about your business, is the goal. So, how are you doing?
Is your website "mobile friendly?"
If your website is more than a year old, chances are it is not up to date for mobile device viewing. With the number of potential customers using mobile to connect to you rising, that should be a concern. The most important pages on your website may not be displaying as intended.
Smartphones, tablets, and other portable devices is at an all-time high. More than eight in 10 people in the U.S. will use a mobile phone and 11.7% of those user will use a mobile device exclusively. That percentage is growing daily.
Using a smartphone and tablet, take the time to look at every page on your website. Is the page view optimum? If not, make a note of those pages and have a professional tweak the layout of those pages.
Is your website being found in search?
For a commercial website the Holy Grail is high rank on a search engine results page (SERP). The results you see are of two general types, organic (retrieved by the search engine's algorithm) and sponsored (paid advertisements).
Each result on the SERP includes a title, a link to the actual page and a short description showing where the keywords matched content within the pages for organic results. Sponsored results show the copy as the advertiser desires.
As a website designer I can tell you that in most cases, the client does not really have a handle on which keywords to favor, or how to integrate them into their pages. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be complex and requires constant maintenance. But the truth is most website owners don't even do the basics. Or they have not updated the information since the website was first built.
If you have someone doing SEO and it's working, stick with it. How do you know if it's working? Your search results will improve. If you have not kept your SEO up to date—or don't know if it's there at all—just make sure you have the basics in place. You don't need a SEO pro to check it out, just someone who knows how to look at the "back end" of your website.
Is your content fresh?
People go to your website to get information. To find contact information, learn about your business, or to shop. Making aure that the information on your pages is fresh, is critical. Stale content is a sure killer of website traffic.
The biggest issue I find with clients who are going online with their first website—or updating pages—is not paying enough attention to content. Why? Because writing good content, using relevant graphics and photos, is a difficult job. More than one website has been delayed just because nobody could define and organize the content.
Everything from an old copyright date at the bottom of the page, to keeping tired information just to fill space, the money you invested in your website is being wasted if you don't have a content maintenance plan. If you expect to have someone in your company write that fresh content you might be waiting a long time. Hire a professional. Get relevant content, well written.
Review each page of your website, look for outdated information. Even the content that gets the job done can benefit from a rewrite. Freshen everything over time. Move content around, feature new information and update boilerplate copy.
Need help with updating your website or an extreme makeover? Let's talk about your project. Get in touch here.